Talk
about being a "sex object." You and everything you do are
nothing but objects, pawns in a cold and constant game that your genes
are playing with your life. Your genes make you horny when you should
study for your college boards, crave cheeseburgers when you need to
watch your weight, spend when you want to save, gamble when you ought
to conserve, cheat when you'd like to be faithful, and cower fearfully
when you ought to be bold.

Authors
Burnham and Phelan have composed a nifty little book that combines
the rigorous truths of evolutionary biology with the chatty style
of a self-help book. None other than the great entomologist/sociobiologist
E.O. Wilson, who is not known to critique self-help books. has called
Mean
Genes "brilliant."

And,
in a way, it is.

Ardent
Darwinians like Burnham, an economics professor at Harvard who studied
chimpanzees in Africa, and Phelan, a Harvard and Yale-educated biology
professor specializing in evolutionary genetics at UCLA, believe in
the power of genes like New Age Christians believe in the power of
angels. Of course, Darwinists would say (and I'd agree), that while
the angels require a major suspension of disbelief, our genes stand
up to tests of science, even when unzipped.

"Even
in areas where we feel we act purely of our own free will, our dramas
are played out on a genetic stage," write Phelan and Burnham.
This wouldn't be such a problem except that, for the most part, our
"genetic stage" was pretty much set many thousands of years
ago in our gatherer/hunter past, long before the emergence of college
boards, fast food and 50th wedding anniversaries. "Genetically,
we are still cavemen and cavewomen despite our living in ultramodern
homes," continue Burnham and Phelan.

Does
this mean we are helpless pawns shackled into perpetual bondage to
our dictatorial genes? Yes, for the most part, we are. As Phelan and
Burnham point out, "Our brain is not an obedient servant."
But sometimes, with a pinch of knowledge and a ton of effort, we can
channel and even trick our genetic impulses into behaving the way
we'd like them to behave.

Trick
our genetic imperative? How? You can't fool Mother Nature, can you?
Of course, you can. Sometimes. Because though our genes provide us
with our lawless passions, they also give us our thirst for knowledge.
Understanding our genes helps us to control them, at least to a degree.
Knowing why you occasionally desire a harem-full of exotic
sex partners instead of being totally satisfied with your beloved
spouse alone can help you to create an exciting-or, at least, bearable--monogamous
sex life.

Which
brings us to the Self-Help part of Mean
Genes, which is high on self, low on help. Advice
falls into two basic categories:
1)"The Arnold" As in Schwartzenegger, of course. Named because
it requires extraordinary self-discipline which the authors admit
that very few people have, but they insist we ought to try to exert
anyway.
2) Fooling Yourself . This means hide the brownies under the napkin,
channel male violence into football and hockey instead of street fighting
and war, masturbate before going out on a big date, etc. Great ideas
which sometimes work and sometimes don't. If you really want to, you'll
find the brownie. And far too many of our finest football players
have been known to be violent off the field. As for masturbating before
a date, well, it worked for Ben Stiller in Something About Mary,
but it could just put some guys to sleep.

Not
many specifics here on how to keep those cheating genes from wreaking
the usual havoc upon your long-term, monogamous marriage. You might
have to reread your copy of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure
for that kind of help.

Nevertheless,
Mean
Genes does contain wonderful sex factoids from the
Animal Kingdom such as "when a male bush cricket ejaculates,
he loses about a quarter of his body weight-contributing a massive
ejaculate that the female hungrily gobbles down as food. For an average
human male, this would be about fifty pounds of semen." Burnham
and Phelan use this spunky sample to demonstrate exactly why human
males are less likely to make a commitment to any given female they're
having sex with than bush crickets. Mean
Genes is filled with these enlightening little analogies
that help us to understand why we do what we do through observing
the behavior of other animals.

Burnham
and Phelan hint at being neo-moralists ("Pornography takes advantage
of our sexual interests" they complain). But they're hardly in
Dr. Laura's camp. In fact, they have some interesting things to say
to Dr. "Gays are Biological Errors" Schlessinger about homosexuality
and genes in their chapter on "Gender." Giving yet another
example of how nature--not nurture--is the key to understanding ourselves,
the authors tell a story that seems to show that performing oral sex
on men doesn't make a guy gay. In Sambia, an area of New Guinea called
'The Semen Belt,' all young boys are expected to orally gratify older
men; the boys are taught that swallowing sperm builds strong bodies
and big penises. "In fact," the authors write, "despite
the childhood indoctrination, the prevalence of adult homosexuality
among the Sambia is lower than that in the United States." Sounds
Greek to me

Seriously,
provocative tales from the worlds of biology and anthropology are
what separate Mean
Genes from the rest of the overflowing self-help
pack.Mean Genes brings up our beloved
kissin' cousins, the bonobos, albeit too briefly for a hardcore bonobophile
like me. I was hoping the authors would discuss how bonobos use different
types of sex to reduce violent tensions in their communities. Instead,
they just write about how bonobos, like humans, are essentially bisexual
and use sex for recreation more often than procreation.

Mean
Genes makes some intriguing points about the elements
of risk and caution. Why do they wreak havoc with human sexuality
and other aspects of life? As Burnham and Phelan tell it, our genes
wire us to take risks with our material things, but not our social
relationships. Risking stuff often paid off at a time when we were
hunters and gatherers, constantly on the move, and losing some possessions
would only lighten your load. Risking making a fool of yourself in
front of people who would probably be in your circle of friends for
the rest of your life was much more serious. This is why many of us
will fearlessly blow all our money in Vegas, but we're too timid .to
speak up to someone we're attracted to at a party, afraid of a humiliation
that isn't likely to last more than a few minutes. Now, say the authors,
in these times of banks and bars, things have reversed themselves,
and most of us need to force or trick our genetic selves into being
more careful with our money and more courageous in approaching that
intriguing stranger.

"The
key to a satisfying life is finding a middle ground that combines
free-flowing pleasure, iron willpower, and the crafty manipulation
of ourselves and our situations," sum up Burnham and Phelan.
The key to creating a good nonfiction book is to make it fast-paced,
witty and packed with facts. Mean
Genes may not make for Sweet Dreams, but it's an
entertaining and occasionally enlightening read.